Matters of Heart and Home

This one is sweet and simple... well sort of. 

A building is called an edifice.  When you build someone up, you edify them.  So you, a rational person, would suppose that the ancient root leading to edifice / edify has something to do with building or structure, right?  No chance.

In this case, our IE root is ai and I'm telling you the truth, it means "to burn".  (Ember and Sicily's Mt Etna volcano are also related.)  Edifice and edify get their e- sound from the ai root.  But that still doesn't explain how we get from burn to build.

Maybe this will help.  I confess that I grew up watching Little House On The Praire.  (I had a crush on Melissa Gilbert).  I remember Pa Ingalls getting up from the dinner table, grabbing his pipe, and lighting it with an ember (hey, remember ember!) from the fire.  Then, standing there at the hearth, he would talk to his wife and children in ways that edified them.  And that's it. (Notice what is behind the girls in the picture.)

Well, let me unpack this for you.  For millennia, the most important part of the home was the fireplace where the home is heated and food is cooked.  Nowadays, there is some demon-possessed machine in the basement that does the heating job and our fireplaces are primarily decorative - but those are only recent "improvements".  The house (edifice) was literally built up around the fireplace or hearth.  And Pa Ingalls vividly demonstrated that family is built up (edified) there at the core of the home - the fireplace or hearth.

Ready for this?  The Latin word for hearth is eides - clearly growing up from our ancient root ai.  There where the burning happens, the core of the edifice is formed and family members are edified.  It's all true.